Lawyers are more than theorists, more than technicians. Lawyers are professionals who must integrate knowledge and ideas with skill, wisdom and creativity. Lawyers are public citizens with a great responsibility to their clients, the bench, the bar and society. Our clinics and field placements prepare students to enter the profession with integrity and excellence and with a heart for service and justice. Students synthesize substance with skill and experience the burden of serving live clients.
The clinics contribute to Faulkner Law’s mission to serve the oppressed and vulnerable in our community. We work in collaboration with many other professionals to seek justice, to liberate the oppressed, and to take up the cause of the marginalized and exposed. The clinics afford a moment of transformation when students shift from performing with cases and problems to serving clients and people. By this service, students gain experience that is transferrable to all areas of their future practice.
Our clinics and field placements are open to all second- and third-year law students.
Elder Law Clinic
In the Elder Law Clinic, students serve senior clients with many legal needs: wills and trusts, powers of attorney, living wills, property and financial needs, and government benefits. The goals of the Elder Law Clinic are to bring security and independence to our clients and to provide students with experience serving clients and their families. We do not typically engage in litigation in the Elder Law Clinic but instead work to help clients and their families avoid conflicts and proceed into later years and end-of-life with peace and stability.
We take seriously our callings to honor parents and to care for widows, so we take cases especially for those in need or with particular vulnerability to destitution or exploitation. Students work with compassion, creativity, honor, excellence and professionalism, and they must exercise discipline, insight and precision in their work.
Supervision
Assistant Clinical Professor of Law John C. Craft supervises and teaches the Elder Law Clinic.
Collaboration
We collaborate with several area organizations to provide comprehensive services to our clients:
Mediation Clinic
In the Mediation Clinic, students co-mediate certain civil cases in district courts. After completing intensive training in alternative dispute resolution, students facilitate the negotiations of adverse parties and help the parties settle their dispute. While the litigants often are unrepresented parties, students also co-mediate cases where the parties are represented by counsel.
The Mediation Clinic advances the law school’s mission by promoting access to justice, the rule of law in the community and peacemaking among neighbors. The skill and wisdom required in this work is universally transferable to all areas of law practice.
Supervision
The Mediation Clinic is an integral element of the School of Law’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Program, under the direction of Kelly McTear, Clinical Associate Professor of Law.
Collaboration
The Mediation Clinic also collaborates with the Alabama Center for Dispute Resolution that recognizes the students’ work toward eventual registry on the Alabama State Court Mediator Roster.
Field Placement Clinic
Faulkner Law’s Field Placement Program provides opportunities for students to gain experience by observing and working with practicing attorneys. In their work, students learn valuable lessons about the profession, meet lawyers and judges throughout the legal community, and integrate the substance and skill they have developed in other courses. In class, students critically examine the role of lawyers in society and the promise of ethical, zealous advocacy. Students receive academic credit for their work and contribute good service at their placements.
The Field Placement Program contributes to our mission of service and access to justice by supporting governmental, judicial, military and public interest law offices. Faulkner Law has established placements with scores of agencies and lawyers, so students can expand their networks and deepen their experience before entering the marketplace.
Faulkner Law develops ongoing relationships with many agencies, courts and law offices to provide placements for students, and we add more all the time. We also help students to develop their own placements in Montgomery and throughout the country. Our goal is to offer placements at local, state, and federal levels in the pro bono, public interest, government service, and judicial areas.
Program parameters
For a better understanding of program parameters and to see some of our consistently popular placements, view our 2019 Field Placement Guide.
Students interested in pursuing a field placement should submit the Field Placement Preregistration Form to Professor Craft.
Nationally recognized for public service
In 2011, National Jurist magazine listed Faulkner Law as one of the top law schools for preparing students for public service in government.
Generational and Ancestral Property (GAP) Clinic
Those at Faulkner Law continue to seek justice and serve their communities through the addition of a fourth pro bono clinic that is helping Alabamians legally retain the right to their land that has been in their family for generations.
Called the GAP (Generational and Ancestral Property) Clinic, this clinic is the first of its kind in the state. It’s goal to assist low-income clients in filling gaps in title to their family’s property in order to provide a pathway to financial stability and generational financial health.
The clinic ties in perfectly with Faulkner Law’s mission, which is Isaiah 1:17, “Learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression, bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.”
Beginning in August 2023 for the fall semester, ten students with the GAP clinic conducted property searches, counseled clients regarding ownership options, litigated or pursued mediation where appropriate and conducted community education events on the importance of clear property ownership.
Professor Kelly McTear, Director of Jones School of Law Public Interest Programs, said a lack of clear property ownership is a widespread issue throughout the rural areas of Alabama.
“There is an astonishing amount of property in the South where the person who was deeded the land died 100 years ago and so that property legally belongs to 50 or more different heirs,” McTear explained. “Those who are paying taxes on the land can’t use it or sell it and are limited with what they can do with it because they don’t actually own the property. Owning land is the best way to improve financial position, and without ownership, you can’t access the value of the property. This is one of the root causes of generational poverty in our state. Through this clinic we hope to be able to provide clear ownership and thus provide generational financial stability for families.”
The GAP clinic is located at the Thomas Goode Jones School of Law on Faulkner University’s campus, 5345 Atlanta Highway, Montgomery, AL 36109. It will initially serve clients in Montgomery and Macon counties.
Those who are interested in acquiring the services of the free GAP clinic may call Faulkner Law at 334-386-7915.
Clinic Faculty
John C. Craft
Director of Clinical and Field Placement Program
334-386-7975
jcraft@faulkner.edu
Kelly F. McTear
Director, Family Violence Clinic
334-386-7924
kmctear@faulkner.edu